You can very easily tell which is a fazor vs. not by just rubbing your finger along the inside of the earcup. If it feels very metallic with harsh edges, they're Fazored. If you have to ask yourself if you feel it or not, then you don't, and they're "classic."
Ultimately, they'll be very very similar. If you like the sound of the LCD series, LCD 2.2, 3C, and 3F will give you very much the same sound. 3C and 3F are very close and the difference is subtle, but...

Berus,
There is a very cheap O2 amplifier on Massdrop right now that will enable you to save cash for something "more" in the future. I'm of the camp that a proper amplifier makes the sound louder and doesn't change the output from the DAC (which, in turn, doesn't change the sound from the source). Look at an O2 (which you can also get in a dac/amp combo) or possibly one of the Audio-GD dac/amp combos. You can easily spend

My LCD-3Fs have returned from Audeze after their second left driver failure in a year. Audeze CS was polite and easy to work with as always. After they shipped back, I probed a bit and asked if there was anything I could do to prevent this from happening in the future. I was told the following (not directly quoting so I don't get in trouble and not mentioned the CS rep's name):
1) The diaphragm is very thin and fragile.
2) They often don't know why this happens at...

You're probably correct. No harm in trying. If nothing else, Audeze can see that we, as a community, are aware of the issue, it's affecting their bottom line, and hopefully make some internal changes. This poll might only be a stepping stone to narrowing it down. Fazor vs. non-fazor would be interesting. Maybe BLOCKS of serial numbers so no one has to post their full number, avoiding any legal issues? I think customer awareness is important around reliability of...

I just got a response from Audeze after a couple correspondences and their representative was very polite, as always. They will be paying my roundtrip shipping costs for the repair and she assured me they would diagnose the root cause of the problem and get back to me.

To what end: To get them to revise their production strategy. It won't be the first time. Back in 2009, they had driver failures with LCD3s, halted production, and fixed it. See the comments here. QC is a helluva beast. Hell, it's my job, but in software. However, a company has a very limited budget and QC is entirely a function of diminishing returns that hits real hard, real fast. So, they have to prioritize the most important issues. If they think that these...

You're not wrong. Also, more people looking for help, tech support, or to see if this is common will be drawn to the thread. Happy folks are enjoying their LCD3s, not reading about them! As of right now, the poll is at 34 votes: 8 single, 9 double, and 2 triple or more replacements. By my count, that's 32 RMAs minimum out of 34 votes. Not a good ratio, no matter how you slice it or who is regularly on the forum and voting. This is costly for both Audeze and users. I...

For me, it was a sudden death. Listening contently, put them down to go to a meeting (music paused), and come back to a dead left ear.
That said, I could have sworn I was hearing more static than usual the few days prior. I would switch the ears the cable would go to and the static would move, it only seemed to happen on certain frequencies on certain recordings, so I assumed (and still do) that it was the recording and I just became more aware of it, making me...